Illiterate Farmers might need more than one day’s training to get their Counselling diplomas

“Counsellors” in Angola provided with one-day workshops in trauma counselling struggling with intensity of their caseloads.

‘At first I thought one day’s training would be plenty’, said rural, illiterate farmer Xcltr (pictured) from Angola, ‘but having just chaired my first group counselling session for parents who lost children in the recent uprising, I realised I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I’d be. They just kept crying. I didn’t even have tissues to offer them.’

‘Once I worked out that they had interpreted ‘lost’ as meaning dead, as opposed to misplaced which I had intended, I decided to rethink my strategy. I thought a tough love approach might have been the best option, but that was only met with more tears.’ Xcltr continued. ‘Who’d have thought, “Get over it” and “You can always have more children”, would fail to cheer them up?’

Xcltr decided to cancel a recent counselling session entitled, ‘ Dealing with currant issues’, when he discovered a load of farmers planned on attending to discuss the EU’s import ban on the small dried fruit. However having spent a full morning in an internet cafe looking at inspirational slogans on Pinterest, he feels he will now be far better equipped to chair the next meeting which he has called, ‘How to deal with Bazaar People’.

The agency who carried out Xcltr’s training (who have asked to remain anonymous) have stated that they are already rethinking the half-day midwifery diploma which they had planned to roll out across Uganda next Friday.